5 tips if you are considering starting an online store

Online retail is one of the most popular sectors for founders, but it is also one of the most competitive. That means you should have the best possible foundation for your dream if you want to succeed. In this article we therefore look more closely at some important points that can decide whether your store becomes part of the statistics or not.

More than 70% of all businesses established today are shut down within five years. You should therefore give your company the best possible starting point, something we believe these points can help you with.

We have already mentioned it, but retail is extremely competitive. That means you should find your niche early rather than aiming too broadly. This is one of the mistakes we see most often when online stores fail to succeed. Large, well-established companies not only have a wide range, they also compete with a name and a reputation that newly established businesses cannot match. Choose your niche with care, and adjust your patience to the size of who you are competing against.

For an online store to succeed it is important that it has clear goals to work towards. Yet a good business plan is one of the things founders most commonly forget. As soon as you have found your niche and your audience you should therefore start on a business plan. We do not mean that you should find answers to every question about running a business, but rather that you build a good foundation for future success. If you find it hard to produce such a plan, we have gathered some guiding questions below.

- What do you want to sell?

- Will you only make money online, or do you also have physical points of sale?

- Who is your audience?

- How will you stand out from your competitors?

- What budget have you set aside at the start?

- Do you have to hire, or will you do the work yourself?

- Have you found the suppliers you need?

- How long will it take before the company makes money?

Once you have found your niche and made a good business plan, it is time to found your company. The following questions should be answered before the papers are sent to the Brønnøysund Register Centre:

- Think through what your company should be called

- Decide how the company should be organised (sole proprietorship, limited company, general partnership and so on)

In most cases where you intend to employ others we would recommend a traditional limited company (AS). That is the form best suited to scalable businesses, and it also gives you as a founder the best protection.

Good control of your finances matters in every business, but especially for those working in retail. That is because the margins you have to survive on are often small, and because you tend to have large volumes in terms of the number of transactions. Finding a good point-of-sale system is therefore decisive. A forward-looking POS system that offers flexible solutions for both physical and digital points of sale is what you should look for, since it means you can easily use the same system wherever you want to sell your products.

After careful planning you can begin. If you are still unsure during the planning but want to get going as quickly as possible without risk, you can fortunately try free online store solutions if you are uncertain about design and setup.

There can be many exciting aspects to starting your own store, but it takes good planning and the right tools to succeed. We have therefore looked more closely at five tips that can make it easier to start a successful store, whether you want to sell products through a physical shop or an online store. We have also looked at some points about how important the right solutions are on the back end of your store. Remember that usability matters just as much for you as the person using the system as it does for your customers who want to buy a product in your store.

We at Link Utvikling can help you along the way. Get in touch for a friendly chat.